Purchase countdown

Hello,

I was hoping someone could help me or point me in the right direction. We are setting up a store front for a charity art sale. We are selling one of a kind art pieces. And the sale opens on a particular date and time. So there will be a rush of people visiting the site to make purchases, some multiple purchases at one time. The question I have is once a customer adds the one of a kind piece of art to their cart, can someone else then go ahead and also add it to their cart and buy it? I was hoping there would be a way to setup a 10min timer so that someone has 10min to complete their purchase but also time to continue shopping for other art pieces. And if they don't make the purchase, then it becomes available to someone else after 10min. We don't want to get into the situation where two people add the same piece of art to their cart and someone thinks they are buying it then someone else checks out before them. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Jayson

Items in the cart are not reserved but a timer might still be a good thing to get someone to purchase:

https://elfsight.com/countdown-timer-widget/squarespace/

On 8/19/2020 at 6:59 PM, derricksrandomviews said:

Items in the cart are not reserved but a timer might still be a good thing to get someone to purchase:

https://elfsight.com/countdown-timer-widget/squarespace/

Thanks for the reply @derricksrandomviews. I looked at that as well. The problem is that if two people add the same item at the same time then the person who checks out first is the one that gets it leaving the other person upset and not a great shopping experience at all. 

1 hour ago, JaysonTaylor said:

Thanks for the reply @derricksrandomviews. I looked at that as well. The problem is that if two people add the same item at the same time then the person who checks out first is the one that gets it leaving the other person upset and not a great shopping experience at all. 

That is one thing that can happen on any shopping site, Amazon, Etsy, and of course Ebay. If the first person could put  it in their cart, reserve it and then doesn't buy after ten minutes, and the second can't get it, because its reserved then well it isn't pleasant for them either, seems like a no win situation either way. Its a bit unusual to start out with a one of a kind item, but I suspect that art gallery websites, which could easily have one of a kind items,  run into this issue at times. 

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/03/17/shopping-cart-abandonment